Ken did some great work with Mahavishnu Orchestra as well.
Every stage of audio production is dependent on the previous. How much work the recording engineer has to do is dependent on the talent and pre-production, the mix engineer on how well it was recorded, and the mastering engineer on how well it was mixed.
One of the reasons I find Indie releases interesting to work on is because many of them are puzzles to be solved. The higher end stuff that I've had the opportunity to work with is usually pretty straightforward and more a matter of preserving what's there.